12 THEVA D UIBOIN] BUDE ein 
A Day With the Pinnated Grouse 
By F. R. DICKINSON 
About the middle of last April, when the first smell of Spring was 
turning our thoughts toward bird photographs, Dr. T. H. Frison, Chief 
of the Illinois Natural History Survey called up Alfred M. Bailey, 
Director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, suggesting a short 
field trip for the purpose of obtaining motion pictures of pinnated 
grouse on a strutting ground. He gave specific directions as to the 
location, which was in a certain open pasture in central Illinois, and 
said that he had already arranged for the construction of blinds. Dur- 
ing the next fortnight, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Earl G. Wright, of the 
Academy and I made two trips returning with some fairly good pic- 
tures and a fairly good excuse for not getting better ones. Mr. Wright 
spent his time in making portraits in color of small birds and brought 
back some pictures which did not call for any excuses. 
As I have said, the field of our operations was an open pasture, 
which was bounded on one side by a well traveled concrete highway, 
and on the opposite side by a stretch of weedy land, long out of cul- 
tivation and marked at the edge with a tangle of low growth running 
back, here and there, into woods of moderate size. During most of the 
day and night the pinnated grouse, or prairie chickens, spend their 
time in this ideal feeding and roosting ground, but twice in each 
twenty-four hours, as regularly as if they wore wrist watches, the 
cocks come into the open to strut. 
The first performance began at about four P. M. We had already 
been in our blinds for an hour and were beginning to think that the 
whole thing was a myth, when a soft, but resonant sound, a little like 
the mating note of the common pigeon, but many times louder, came 
Photograph by the Author and A. M. Bailey 
THE DANCE OF THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN 
